Anne Boleyn

Lemongrove . Not long before the words “PC brigade” and “pull/play the race card” appear either,

And again....” A film/play set in 1960s south Africa during apartheid. The story is set around a poverty stricken black woman and her struggle to bring up her family alone. If this part were portrayed by a white young man?”

The point of that is that being about apartheid the actor would have to be black as that’s the theme.

Boleyn’s story isn’t about her colour.

Aveline

Was Anne Boleyn of black African origin? No.

Aren't we all of black African origin?

Alegrias With no animosity intended Aveline, can you not see that saying the sight of a black person in Tudor garb is not authentically 16th Century, might just be a little bit incendiary?

Only to those to become inflamed!

desperate

Well the producer thinks its about colour, or he wouldn't have cast her.

theworriedwell

Aveline

Was Anne Boleyn of black African origin? No.

Aren't we all of black African origin?

theworriedwell wins the internet today...

theworriedwell

Yammy

You or I might know Anne Boleyn was white, I saw yesterday her brother George is also to be black.
How many Scots teenagers failed their exams for following the Mel Gibsons "Brave Heart "when most of the facts about William Wallace and the history of the time were wrong.

Doesn't matter does it, he was white and so was Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson was white but he was Australian. As a Cumbrian, I laughed when I saw him playing Fletcher Christian. Though he did have a reasonable upper-class gents accent and was really dashing. Quite a lot of good scots actors could have played the part Sean Connery for one.
Shakespeare made a lot of historical errors in his plays,i.e. chimney pots in Rome in Julius Ceasar, he also set the ideas of a lot of people about Richard 111. He was anti-Semitic{Shylock] and so was Dickens{Fagin] but the ideas of the day were not the same as we have now.
They were plays some about countries he probably had never visited and as for Richard 111 some academics think he wrote it to please the Tudors. I have seen a Henry with Status Quo playing "We're in the Army now".
We know different now and have paintings to prove what these people in history actually looked like. How do teachers explain to children the inaccuracies they are viewing.
If to be politically correct and people are frowned on when they black up surely it is just as wrong to portray white people as black. It goes both ways.

Aleg....there is no ‘winning the internet’ ( not even this forum or this particular thread, come to that.)
It’s just a discussion about casting, not a war.
As in politics, we all have different opinions which is fine, what
Isn’t fine, is posters trying to imply that those who like at least a modicum of historical accuracy in their tv programmes are thinking in a ‘racist’ way.
The thread didn’t start off that way, but increasingly, when posters saw that others didn’t agree with them, this rather desperate assertion of racism crept in.

lemongrove

*Aleg*....there is no ‘winning the internet’ ( not even this forum or this particular thread, come to that.)
It’s just a discussion about casting, not a war.
As in politics, we all have different opinions which is fine, what
Isn’t fine, is posters trying to imply that those who like at least a modicum of historical accuracy in their tv programmes are thinking in a ‘racist’ way.
The thread didn’t start off that way, but increasingly, when posters saw that others didn’t agree with them, this rather desperate assertion of racism crept in.

I’d give up if I were you lemongrove. Yesterday, on the other Anne Boleyn thread, a very ‘wise and well read gransnetter,’ informed me, that even to say you have black friends is now considered racist! There’s nothing you can do with that, except retreat. ?

Oh my goodness. A girl could feel picked on. If she cared.

BTW - carrying over criticisms from other threads is frowned on. You'll never win the internet that way.

How much do other casting decisions bother people? I asked about a French Canadian playing Anne Boleyn, I don't think anyone answered. Mel Gibson playing an Englishman has been mentioned, Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. How about Ingrid Bergman playing Gladys Aylward, tall Swedish woman playing a short English woman? None of these things seem to cause much upset. White actors playing Native Americans was quite common I think. Yul Brynner, Russian, playing the King of Siam (Thailand.) Charlton Heston as so many biblical characters it would be hard to list them all.

Are all those things OK because no white person is portrayed by a non white person and if that is so then what is the reason.

To show respect to a person even if they are long dead they should be portrayed as accurately as possible.
There is nothing racist about this. If a person of colour was represented by a white actor this too would be disrespectful.

theworriedwell after reading all the "Caedmon" books I watched the TV series. The short, stocky, practical and decisive Welsh Caedmon with dark curly hair of the books (all spelt out in the text) was played as dreamy and indecisive (and more than a bit wet) by a tallish, willowy, mousy-straight-haired Derek Jacobi. By the end of the series he had made the character his own, but it always seemed to me a totally different Caedmon to the one the author created.

*what
Isn’t fine, is posters trying to imply that those who like at least a modicum of historical accuracy in their tv programmes are thinking in a ‘racist’ way.
The thread didn’t start off that way, but increasingly, when posters saw that others didn’t agree with them, this rather desperate assertion of racism crept in.*
This is a great example of what I was getting at earlier on one of the AB threads

The above is one interpretation of what happened on this thread, based on the outlook of one poster’s interpretation of the motives and thought processes of others. It is not my interpretation, and I am pretty sure that yet others will have their own opinions which my be different again.

History, even recent history, is not about ‘facts’. It is about interpretation.

So no one up in arms about Yul Brynner, Ingrid Bergman, Charlton Heston then?

I wonder why some people think racism plays a part in this?

AGAA4

To show respect to a person even if they are long dead they should be portrayed as accurately as possible.
There is nothing racist about this. If a person of colour was represented by a white actor this too would be disrespectful.

And showing respect seems to primarily come down to no black person portraying a white person?

https://signal-corridor.live/uploads/talk/202105/medium-330249-anne-boleyn.jpg%3C/span%3E https://signal-corridor.live/uploads/talk/202105/medium-299820-anne-boleyn2.jpg%3C/span%3E

Anne Boleyn was a real person so we owe her the respect of trying to get it right with her appearance, the correct age, hair colour, race.

Keith Michell had a couple of Annes who were close to being accurate. Dorothy Tutin in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (TV series) and Charlotte Rampling in Henry VIII and his Six Wives (movie).

I'd say you'd won the internet again theworriedwell but it seems to get some people's backs up.

Toadinthehole ?
Am thoroughly bored by the subject now in any case, so will leave the ‘wise and well read GNer’ ( no idea who that is!) to chunter on from a sedentary position.

Elegran

theworriedwell after reading all the "Caedmon" books I watched the TV series. The short, stocky, practical and decisive Welsh Caedmon with dark curly hair of the books (all spelt out in the text) was played as dreamy and indecisive (and more than a bit wet) by a tallish, willowy, mousy-straight-haired Derek Jacobi. By the end of the series he had made the character his own, but it always seemed to me a totally different Caedmon to the one the author created.

Cadfael, isn't it?

Alegrias1

I'd say you'd won the internet again theworriedwell but it seems to get some people's backs up.

Made me chuckle, I rarely win anything although I did win a Christmas hamper when I was a young mum with no money. Oh the excitement, someone offered to drive it home for me but I was so thrilled (and worried in case it got lost) that I loaded it onto the pram.

Oh yes, *FannyCornforth", Caedfael not Caedmon, but neither of them cads. It was along time ago that I read the books. Must read them again.

Caedmon was a different bloke altogether, a cowherd named Cædmon who lived at the Abbey of Whitby and composed beautiful poetry. His story was told by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People I have found a piece online about him here

Read the post. I also said no white person should play a black person who had lived

That was for the worriedwell